The ASCP aims to provide a broad intellectual forum for academics and postgraduates working in the European philosophical tradition. Its annual conference is the largest event devoted to European philosophy in Australasia.

The conference will feature a number of curated streams, including ‘Philosophies of Self-Formation’, ‘Continental Philosophy and Other Traditions’, ‘Phenomenologies of Oppression’, ‘Law and Continental Philosophy’, ‘Philosophy and Creative Practice’ and ‘Politics and Technology’.

The later work of Michel Foucault announced a turn towards classical philosophical conceptions of self-formation. Alongside work by Dumanski, Sellars, Voelke and others influenced by Pierre and Ilsetraut Hadot, Foucault’s later works point to an alternative understanding of the history of philosophy, paying renewed attention to the Hellenistic, Roman and early modern periods downplayed or overlooked in many 19th and 20th century histories. This stream will involve papers examining the history of the metaphilosophical conceptions of philosophy as a way of life, or as therapeutic, or as interested in paideia or self-formation, which reached its peaks during these periods. Papers are invited on the Stoics, Epicureans, Cicero, the sceptics, Petrarch and the renaissance philosophers, Montaigne and the new Pyrrhonists, the founders of the modern scientific project(s), the philosophes, Spinoza, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche … or other figures speaking to this theme.

6. Law and Philosophy – curated by John Morss and Luca Siliquini-Cinelli (john.morss@deakin.edu.au, l.siliquinicinelli@deakin.edu.au)

What is sovereignty? What is a legal right or a legal obligation? What is a nation? What, if anything, is a human right, the Rule of Law, Global Justice? Can law recognise the plural: can a legal cosmopolitanism transcend identity politics? In addressing such questions contemporary legal philosophy and jurisprudence are dominated by English-speaking, Anglo-American traditions in philosophy. Analytic traditions of a conservative stripe, themselves a narrow representation of English-speaking philosophical discourse, exert near-exclusive control on jurisprudential debate. Cultural hegemony is one reason for this but the lack of engagement between legal theorists and Continental philosophies is another. This stream hopes to address this gap by foregrounding the contributions and challenges to legal theory that are presented by writers such as Agamben, Arendt, Deleuze, Derrida, Foucault, Ranciere, Zizek. In terms of non-Anglo jurisprudence, while already well mined, the writings of Schmitt and of Kelsen may yet have more to yield to these debates. Philosophy of law is too important to ignore the wide variety of perspectives offered by Continental thought.